St. Joseph’s Healthcare has selected who will design, build and maintain a new mental illness and addiction facility at the hospital.

Plenary Health has been chosen as the preferred proponent to construct the West 5th Campus project that will include 305 beds, expanded outpatient psychiatric clinics and research space.

Financing is expected to close in December, and the project’s costs will be announced thereafter.

The Plenary Health team includes Plenary Group, Innisfree as developer, design by Cannon Design, construction by PCL Construction Canada, facilities management by Honeywell, and Royal Bank of Canada as financial adviser.

In the works for more than a decade, work St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton’s new $581 million mental health hospital at Fennell and West 5th is 95 percent complete.

“We’re on budget and on schedule,” said Theresa Reynolds, project director at St. Joes, who noted the healthcare organization will take possession of the hospital from the contractor four weeks from today (Friday) on Dec. 6.

Patients from the former Hamilton Psychiatric Hospital next door are slated to move in on Feb 9 after a nearly two-month staff transition and training period.
“We’re mostly done inside,” said Reynolds, who noted final painting, electrical and landscaping work is now being done.

The landscaping work includes 16 courtyards around the hospital and a pedestrian plaza at West 5th and Fennell.

Hospital equipment, including the MRI machinery, has been installed over the last several months.

Reynolds noted the massive magnet for the MRI was lowered into the basement level by crane through a large hole on the Fennell side of the hospital about three weeks ago.

In addition to in and out-patient mental health services, the state-of-the-art hospital will provide community diagnostic services such as MRI, breast imaging, x-ray and ultrasound.

The five storey, 855,000 square-foot hospital will be able to accommodate up to 305 in patients, compared to 214 beds at the current mental health facility.
All but three of those rooms are for single patients and each room will have an en-suite bathroom featuring a hands-free no-tap sink that is operated by a motion sensor.

The new hospital will also have four apartment units that will be home to patients who are under a 30-day assessment to see if they are capable of looking after themselves including doing their own cooking, cleaning and shopping prior to being discharged and those units will be supervised by hospital nursing staff.

Patients will be able to use the 5,860 square-foot gymnasium on the second floor which also features a mall-like corridor that includes an activity room, used clothing store, salon and coffee shop.

The gymnasium, like much of the new hospital, features large windows for natural light.

Reynolds noted the new campus will be a teaching facility with five meeting rooms and a 300-seat auditorium for lectures and conferences.

The new hospital, to be officially known as the Margaret and Charles Juravinski Centre for Integrated Healthcare in recognition of the couple’s $10 million gift to a St. Joes’ fundraising campaign in 2011, will include a museum featuring the history of mental health services in Hamilton.

Starting next spring the former HPH buildings will be torn down to make way for more parking.

In addition, new baseball diamonds, tennis courts, soccer fields and walking paths are slated for the north side of the 55-acre site that will be available to patients and the public.

All of the work is expected to be wrapped by the fall of 2014.

Reynolds said the old Century Manor building on the site, which belongs to Infrastructure Ontario, will be preserved.

As many as 900 people are expected to work at the new hospital over the next few years, including about 500 staff currently working at the old facility.